The Indian With His Dead Child.[370]

In the silence of the midnight I journey with my dead; In the darkness of the forest boughs A lonely path I tread.

But my heart is high and fearless, As by mighty wings upborne; The mountain eagle hath not plumes So strong as love and scorn.

I have raised thee from the grave-sod, By the white man’s path defiled; On to th’ ancestral wilderness, I bear thy dust, my child!

I have ask’d the ancient deserts To give my dead a place, Where the stately footsteps of the free Alone should leave a trace.

And the tossing pines made answer-- “Go, bring us back thine own!” And the streams from all the hunters’ hills, Rush’d with an echoing tone.

Thou shalt rest by sounding waters That yet untamed may roll; The voices of that chainless host With joy shall fill thy soul.

In the silence of the midnight I journey with the dead, Where the arrows of my father’s bow Their falcon-flight have sped.

I have left the spoilers’ dwellings For evermore behind; Unmingled with their household sounds, For me shall sweep the wind.

Alone, amidst their hearth-fires, I watch’d my child’s decay, Uncheer’d I saw the spirit-light From his young eyes fade away.

When his head sank on my bosom, When the death-sleep o’er him fell, Was there one to say, “A friend is near?” There was none!--pale race, farewell!

To the forests, to the cedars, To the warrior and his bow, Back, back!--I bore thee laughing thence, I bear thee slumbering now!

I bear thee unto burial With the mighty hunters gone; I shall hear thee in the forest breeze, Thou wilt speak of joy, my son!

In the silence of the midnight I journey with the dead; But my heart is strong, my step is fleet, My fathers’ path I tread.

An Indian, who had established himself in a township of Maine, feeling indignantly the want of sympathy evinced towards him by the white inhabitants, particularly on the death of his only child, gave up his farm soon afterwards, dug up the body of his child, and carried it with him two hundred miles through the forests to join the Canadian Indians.--See Tudor’s Letters on the Eastern States of America.

SONG OF EMIGRATION.

There was heard a song on the chiming sea. A mingled breathing of grief and glee; Man’s voice, unbroken by sighs, was there, Filling with triumph the sunny air; Of fresh, green lands, and of pastures new, It sang, while the bark through the surges flew.

But ever and anon A murmur of farewell Told, by its plaintive tone, That from woman’s lip it fell.

“Away, away o’er the foaming main!” This was the free and the joyous strain, “There are clearer skies than ours, afar, We will shape our course by a brighter star; There are plains whose verdure no foot hath press’d, And whose wealth is all for the first brave guest.”

“But, alas! that we should go,” Sang the farewell voices then, “From the homesteads, warm and low, By the brook and in the glen!”

“We will rear new homes under trees that glow As if gems were the fruitage of every bough; O’er our white walls we will train the vine, And sit in its shadow at day’s decline; And watch our herds, as they range at will Through the green savannas, all bright and still.

“But woe for that sweet shade Of the flowering orchard-trees, Where first our children play’d Midst the birds and honey-bees!

“All, all our own shall the forests be, As to the bound of the roebuck free! None shall say, ‘Hither, no further pass!’ We will track each step through the wavy grass We will chase the elk in his speed and might, And bring proud spoils to the hearth at night.”

“But, oh! the gray church-tower, And the sound of Sabbath bell, And the shelter’d garden-bower, We have bid them all farewell!

“We will give the names of our fearless race To each bright river whose course we trace; We will leave our memory with mounts and floods, And the path of our daring in boundless woods; And our works unto many a lake’s green shore, Where the Indians’ graves lay, alone, before.”

“But who shall teach the flowers, Which our children loved, to dwell In a soil that is not ours? Home, home and friends, farewell!”